Looming fed funds would mean lots of sand for San Clemente

This picture, taken in June 2012, shows how San Clemente bulldozed sand onto the beach to create a berm for beachgoers. FILE PHOTO: FRED SWEGLES, STAFF WRITER

DID YOU KNOW

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee in Congress, was the lead Senate negotiator on the water resources bill.

WASHINGTON – San Clemente officials learned Friday that they are a big step closer to landing the millions of federal dollars – and tons of fresh sand – needed to widen and spruce up the city’s eroding beaches and to protect the shoreline near the critical coastal railroad corridor.

Under a water infrastructure bill expected to win congressional approval next week, the city would be eligible for $51 million in federal funds deemed essential for the beach replenishment project. State and local officials will need to match those funds to pay for the project’s eventual $99 million cost over 50 years.

The San Clemente beach plan is among four new California projects that were reviewed and recommended by the Army Corps of Engineers, making them eligible for federal construction funding. The projects and other proposals, detailed in a House-Senate conference committee report released late Thursday, are part of sweeping water resources legislation expected to be approved by Congress next week.

San Clemente’s elected officials already have endorsed the plan. On Friday, Bill Hart, chairman of San Clemente’s Coastal Advisory Committee, said congressional authorization for the project is a “huge step” toward the restoration of the beaches.

“Our beaches have been eroding for a long time, so this is the way we can reverse a longstanding trend and hopefully bring back our beautiful beaches.”

Without federal dollars, “there was no way we could carry out this replenishment.”

Assistant City Engineer Tom Bonigut called the latest step toward funding the project a milestone, but estimated it would be 2017 at the earliest that tons of new sand might be dumped, shaped and spread along the city’s shoreline. First the city has to work on logistics, design and securing the matching funds.

Joe Johnson, a project manager for the Los Angeles District Army Corps of Engineers, said the San Clemente plan is among five projects nationwide authorized to prevent hurricane and storm damage. Wider beaches, he noted, prevent waves from reaching man-made structures.

In San Clemente, city officials would be required to provide $3.9 million of the $11 million sought for the initial round of replenishment; subsequent rounds of replenishment would continue periodically over 50 years.

About every six years, as a need for new sand arises, 250,000 cubic yards of beach-quality sand would be dredged from a site off Oceanside, taken by barge to San Clemente and deposited along a 3,400-foot-long stretch of beach. For the additional rounds of replenishment, the cost will be shared equally between local and federal governments.

San Clemente’s beaches are unusual in that they are not part of what is called the “Orange County littoral cell,” Hart explained.

Each cell is a natural compartment with its own cycle of sedimentation. San Clemente is part of a littoral cell that stretches from the Dana Point Headlands to La Jolla Canyon and is thus more closely related to the cycles of San Diego beaches.

“Beaches in northern San Diego County already had exhibited extreme erosion about the time we were starting to see our problems about 12 years ago,” Hart said. San Clemente looked to cities to the south to help guide the project’s proposal since those cities “are several years ahead of us in terms of replenishment activities.”

NEXT IN SAN CLEMENTE

If Congress passes the water bill next week, that does not mean “we will start dumping sand on the beach tomorrow,” Hart said.

This picture, taken in June 2012, shows how San Clemente bulldozed sand onto the beach to create a berm for beachgoers. FILE PHOTO: FRED SWEGLES, STAFF WRITER
Surfers walk a rocky, nearly sandless landscape at San Clemente's North Beach in November 2012. FILE PHOTO: FRED SWEGLES, STAFF WRITER
The beach around San Clemente Marine Safety headquarters has been losing sand for 30-plus years. In the 1970s, sand reached nearly to the top of the pilings. FILE PHOTO: PAUL BERSEBACH, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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